A STUDY OF NON DARCY FLOW THROUGH POROUS FOAM MEDIA

Simplifying the complicated structure of the foam matrix so as to get a regular cube frame of geometry, and utilizing the equivalent element channel, a physical model, which takes accounts of the inertial effects caused by the matrix form drag against the flow as well as the effects coming from the surface friction drag between fluid and solid medium, was proposed. A relation between pressure gradient and velocity for the non Darcy flow through porous media was formulated. Thereby, the expressions of predicting the permeability k of foam materials and the coeffieient F of square term of velocity in F-W relation were derived by the cube frame. Measurements of k and F of the foam ceramics for four pore sizes have also been made in a special apparatus. The results show that the theoretical predictions, based on the model presented in this paper, agree with the experiment values and provide corresponding data of the flow feature for the application of porous foam materials.